Too much had hit him too quickly.
Shaken, Adam parked at the side of the road, sorting the lies and deceptions that bound them all-Jenny, Clarice, Teddy, and himself-to a man who, even in death, continued to control their lives. He did not yet know how, if at all, Ben’s will was linked to his murder, and what truths about his family he had yet to grasp. The only person he credited with candor, however tentatively, was Carla Pacelli.
I’ve only lied to you once, for reasons of my own, and not about Jenny or the will.
Whatever it was must concern his father, and perhaps his mother.
So many compromises, Clarice had said to him long ago, so much hurt.
Which compromises, he wondered now, and whose hurt? The more threads he pulled, the more Adam sensed that the damage Ben inflicted, including Jenny’s and his own, stemmed from something still concealed from him. More deeply than before, he had begun to fear the truth. And yet he had to know it.
I thought Grandfather went bankrupt before I was born.
No, his mother had replied. After.
Switching on the ignition, Adam headed for Edgartown.
It was a quarter to five, near closing time at the Registry of Deeds. But a jovial gray-haired woman who recalled Adam from high school pointed him to the index that listed buyers and sellers of real estate back two centuries and more. Clarice’s father and his own were linked by a single line.
It took forty minutes more, the clerk waiting patiently. At last, Adam found the deed that passed title to his mother’s childhood home to Benjamin Blaine. The document which, combined with the postnuptial agreement, had empowered Ben to give it to his lover.
Pensive, Adam stared at the date: February 16, 1974. A schism in the lives of his family, capping the financial ruin that had stripped Clarice’s father of everything. A date three years before Adam was born.
Adam thanked his helper for her patience and drove to Matthew Thomson’s office.
The lawyer was still at his desk, scanning computerized time sheets he would turn into billings. “I hate this part,” he told Adam. “Measuring my time in tenths of hours. Makes me feel like a damned accountant.” He paused, gauging Adam’s expression. “This is your second visit of the day, and you’re looking even grimmer than before.”
“Just curious. I’m wondering if you have the postnuptial agreement at hand.”
Thomson’s expression became probing. “Ordinarily, something that old would be in a warehouse. But your mother’s will contest with Ms. Pacelli has given it fresh currency. Still, I’m wondering why you need it. You’re well aware of its parlous effects on Clarice, and I’m sure she has a copy at home.”
“True. But it’s a sensitive subject with her. I’d rather review it in the serenity of your office.”
Thomson raised his eyebrows, then took a file from a desk drawer and handed it to Adam. “My proudest moment in the law,” he said wearily. “Let me show you to the conference room.”
They went there, Thomson closing the door behind his visitor. Sitting at a mahogany table, Adam began to read.
Thomson had done the job Benjamin Blaine had paid him for. The document was detailed, precise, and draconian, destroying his mother’s rights with chilling thoroughness. None of this surprised him. Nor, to Adam’s profound unease, did the date-October 11, 1976. Over two years after his father had bought their house.
There’s something else I’d like to be clear about, Adam had told his mother. When you signed the postnup, you believed you’d still inherit from your father.
Yes, she had said brusquely. As I recall, this is the third time you’ve asked that.
And each time Clarice had lied.
Chin propped on balled fist, Adam stared at the table.
I asked Ben, Thomson had told him, why the hell she’d sign a document consigning her to economic serfdom, and why he’d want her to. His response-delivered in his most mordant tone-was that this was personal between husband and wife.
Between February 1974 and October 1976, something had happened.
Standing, Adam returned to Thomson’s office, placing the document on his desk. “Satisfied?” Thomson asked.
“Completely. As I read this, Carla Pacelli has every reason to be grateful for your efforts.”
Thomson considered this with a frown. “An odd thought,” he replied. “Considering that she probably wasn’t born yet.” His frown deepened. “I remember thinking this was a time bomb I devoutly hoped would never go off. Thirty-four years later, it has.”
Troubled, Adam drove home for dinner with the mother and brother who had lied to him, pursued by thoughts of Jenny.
The dinner hour was subdued. Adam had little to say, less he could tell them, and too many questions it was not yet time to ask. The unspoken knowledge he shared with Teddy, withheld from their mother, burdened them both.
At length, she looked from Teddy to Adam. In a sharp tone that hinted at her tension, she said, “What is it with you two?”
Teddy’s belated smile was more a tic. “It’s just hard, Mom. Both of us miss Dad such a lot.”
And maybe you killed him, Adam thought. Then Teddy caught his eye, and Adam understood that there was something his brother wished to say to him alone.
“I wish his death were that amusing,” Clarice rebuked her sons. “You can’t imagine how it feels to begin a family with such hope, then see it deteriorate so horribly, with Ben delivering his final judgment on us all.”
But why? Adam wanted to ask, and could not.
Afterward, the two brothers sat on the porch gazing at the woods and grass, a soft green in twilight. It reminded Adam of their youth, the many days and hours when, chary of their parents, they had taken refuge in each other’s company. But by this time next year the house might be Carla Pacelli’s, and Teddy might be in prison.
“Do you have something to say?” Adam asked.
Teddy eyed him. “I was thinking you look like hell.”
“So I’m told. It’s been a bad day.”
“Seems like an understatement,” Teddy said pointedly. “The light in your eyes is gone.”
He could have been describing himself, Adam thought-he looked haggard, as though sleep had eluded him for nights on end. “My problems are yours,” he countered. “I sense that something more happened since our last frank and candid exchange.”
Teddy glanced over his shoulder, ensuring that their mother could not hear. Under his breath, he said, “George Hanley told my lawyer he’s impaneling a grand jury. I could be indicted within days.”
Gazing at the lawn, Adam absorbed what this could mean: the machinery of justice switching into gear, slowly but inexorably grinding forward until it delivered his brother to a life of torment and confinement for a crime that, to Adam, was less a crime than an act of cosmic justice. “What’s your strategy?” he asked.
“I’ve got two choices,” his brother replied in the same near whisper. “Take the information you gave us and try to give George Hanley a story that creates enough doubt to slow him down. Or accept that indictment for Dad’s murder may be inevitable, and save my version of events until Hanley puts me on the stand. If there were a third choice, I’d take it.”
Adam felt leaden. Once Teddy’s fate was in the hands of a jury, it might be sealed by his lies to the police. And all that Adam could offer him was Jenny.
That day was like another message from my father, she had told him. “You’ll never be important enough to care about, just to use.”
Watching his expression, Teddy regarded Adam with tender gravity. “Don’t take it so hard. You’ve done all you can. As only I know.”
But Adam had not. As only he knew.
Touching Teddy’s shoulder, he stood, went to the kitchen for a bottle of Ben’s scotch, and then locked himself in his room.
For an hour, Adam sat drinking scotch, the window a dark square, the chirring of crickets evoking nights spent with his father on the porch.
Who had killed him, he kept asking, and why?
Most likely Teddy; least likely Carla-with Jenny in the balance. Someone for Adam to sacrifice in the hope of saving another of Ben’s victims, his brother.
At midnight, the bottle half-finished, Adam fell into a broken sleep.
The nightmare came swiftly. Hellfire missiles rained down on a village controlled by the Taliban. Adam watched the carnage from the edge of a cliff, surrounded by other Taliban with rifles. Their leader spoke in the tones of a judge passing sentence. “You are responsible for the death of our brothers.” As his followers aimed their rifles at his head, Adam leaped off the cliff, a vertiginous fall toward the beach where his father died and Jenny had tried to kill herself-
He snapped awake, sweat dampening his face.
There was no point in asking what this meant. The meaning of Afghanistan was simple enough. He had six months left to serve, and an excellent chance of dying. It would be easier to accept his fate, whatever it was, if he left his brother and mother better off for his return.
Stumbling to the bathroom, he splashed cold water on his face, then resumed sitting at the end of his bed.
Why did my mother lie to me? he silently asked his father. And what secret did you entrust to Carla Pacelli?
The answer, if Adam could find it, must lie in the will Benjamin Blaine had left them.
By now he could divine, however imperfectly, the workings of Ben’s mind. He had left money to Carla because of their son; to Jenny less out of guilt than shame, the hope of burying his seduction of a young woman and the betrayal of his son. But his motive for making Adam executor was more obscure. Though this ploy seemed likely to keep Adam on the island, he rejected the notion that Ben had done this for Jenny’s sake, or that his father imagined that Adam’s hundred-thousand-dollar inheritance would keep him from undermining the will. Father and son had known each other too well; Ben could not have doubted that Adam would act to protect his mother. So Ben’s treatment of Clarice remained the heart of the unknown, revealing a depth of malice unexplained by anything Adam knew. And the gift of an old photo album, one among so many, made no sense at all.
Once again, Adam picked up the album.
It contained photographs of Ben in Cambodia, meticulously dated, covering a two-and-a-half-month period in that country’s terrible history, including atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge in the spring and early summer of 1976. His father had dared much to go there, and documented it all. There was page upon page of photographs of Ben with soldiers, guerrillas, doctors, and guides, or on a sampan or in some temple destroyed by war. Were another man featured in these photographs, he would have drawn Adam’s admiration-he knew very well how it felt to put his life at risk. As it was, given that this bequest accompanied the ruin of his mother, Adam wondered at the vast reserves of narcissism that had caused Ben to think his son would give a damn.
Suddenly, he stopped, staring at a date on one page. Then another.
I think he loved your mother once, Jack had told him. At least as much as he was capable of love.
When? Adam had asked. Before I was born?
Ben had hidden their secret in plain sight, knowing he would come to it in time.
Adam began shaking.
“You bastard,” he said aloud. Said this in grief and hatred and wonder. Said this with a crushing sense of solitude that was too much to endure.
His entire life had been premised on a lie.